Kind and Gentle Comparisons

“If some folks felt a few years back that Canada was the kinder, gentler nation America wanted to be, I felt New Zealand was the kinder, gentler nation we’d like to think of ourselves as,” Toronto Star travel editor Jim Byers compares. “Or maybe what we think we were when Elvis Presley was just starting his scandalous gyrations. The Kiwis are, in so many ways, like us. There’s that background Britishness, although we in Canada are far, far more American in our outlook and tastes. More importantly, both of us feel overshadowed and, yes, probably unappreciated by a monstrous neighbour next door (or across the Tasman Sea) that gobbles up most of the ink and attracts the Oprah Winfreys of the world.”